During the first wave of the pandemic, education was one of the many sectors to keenly feel the effects of Covid-19. Almost overnight, classrooms emptied, and thousands of children, and thousands of teachers, began to adapt to new ways of learning and teaching. The challenge presented to schools and FE colleges was as profound as it was urgent.
Happily, Management Information Systems (MIS) helped bridge this void, making a huge contribution to ensuring that teachers were only remote from their pupils, rather than distant and disconnected. They also enabled schools to answer the particular challenges of the day.
For instance, when the Department of Education required schools to alter their existing absence records, to allow for Covid-19 absences to be labelled as such, MIS platforms were there. They answered with great agility, adapting underlying, backend technology to allow for information such as enhanced attendance data – absolutely vital for safeguarding, and monitoring pupil progress – to be tracked.
To put it another way: in an increasingly digital world, accelerated by Covid-19, the growth of MIS was, perhaps, inevitable.
Covid-19: challenge and answer
All education institutions, be they primary schools, sixth form or further education colleges, fulfil an incredibly important pastoral role for children, and with students suddenly removed from the classroom, important questions needed to be addressed: how do you track attendance? How do you fulfil safeguarding requirements, with pupils not present? How do you register children in the morning and afternoon, remotely? It was these questions that MIS answered, allowing teachers to log and record information, and share it with their peers, to ensure pupil progress was maintained.
The growth of MIS platforms, and of EdTech, is perhaps unsurprising then. Covid-19 created an unprecedented scale of demand for MIS platforms, and critically, it laid the bedrock for future growth. Indeed, the UK currently leads the EU EdTech market, and is now worth an estimated £3.4bn. Globally, the market size is expected to almost triple over the next five years. Covid-19 is not the sole reason for this growth, but it was the catalyst – other factors, such as government policy, increased investment, and technological advances, it could be argued, have all been required, or spurred on, by the pandemic.
Future demands
As the pandemic recedes, and pupils go back to the classroom, the challenges faced are no longer as urgent – and yet, MIS platforms will continue to evolve. During the pandemic, agility and flexibility were the most important, and necessary, characteristics for a successful MIS platform. 2022 might have brought with it a more manageable virus but the fundamental need to adapt – a keynote of 2021 – will remain, albeit with MIS changing to meet the demands of an increasingly digital educational landscape.
In schools, demands for personalised, tailored lessons are leading to calls for close to one-on-one teaching, with lessons targeted at individual pupils’ learning needs. The higher levels of ‘gamification’, and teaching methods that were altered to try to increase remote engagement, could also grow in significance – but in what shape?
MIS platforms will ultimately change to confront these demands, enabling information to be tracked that allows teachers to develop bespoke lesson plans, for instance. And whilst the development of technology such as machine learning might provide a sketch of what the future will look like, and is certainly something to be kept on the radar – for now, video content on MIS platforms needs to be as cutting edge as possible, and it is imperative that integration with third-party platforms continues.
Future challenges
Of course, this growth and increased use does not come without its challenges. At FE colleges, for instance, the demands of vocational courses are significantly different to those of traditional school lessons. While hybrid learning might suit sixth formers on days with minimal lesson-time, allowing them to work from home, for FE institutions, with a high proportion of vocational courses, MIS platforms will have to evolve for this frequent attendance. Similarly, as machine learning and the technologies referred to earlier develop, the sector could encounter issues of algorithmic bias, and increased data compliance requirements.
The last two years have borne witness to technological disruption across every sector, in the greatest digital upheaval of our times. In education, this now means that the wider EdTech market is primed for growth in the UK. While moving fast, the market is in its infancy. Covid-19 provided a surge of demand, and a spark, that may now grow into a flame. Teachers are now more familiar with online learning than ever before, and with the demands of hybrid lessons, something that will pave the way for further ease of adoption. The depth of talent and innovation mean that we are already seeing new and exciting start-ups within the space, and this is likely to continue.
While there will be challenges, with adaptation and flexibility as watchwords learnt from Covid-19, MIS platforms will go from strength to strength and it is here that the eyes of developers, investors and teachers will be trained.
